


the city lies inviting

by asteriel



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Arson, Baking, Corpse Desecration, Domestic Criminal Boyfriends, Fake AH Crew, Female Jack Pattillo, Fluff and Humor, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Murder, They're definitely not Good People but they're having a Good Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 08:50:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17639618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asteriel/pseuds/asteriel
Summary: Five moments from the life and times of the Fake AH Crew’s two most volatile duo. Casual murder sprees, fashionably accessorizing, and baking are all just a regular part of the dynamic.





	the city lies inviting

**Author's Note:**

> (Alternate Summary: Five Ridiculous Shenanigans of two famously destructive Los Santos criminals in Love + some Fake AH-verse worldbuilding.)
> 
> I started this in early 2016, finished it in 2018, and it has been haunting me ever since. The fic title is from Apollo Creed by Cobra Starship! If you listen to Cobra Starship long enough, all of their songs will end up as Fake AH songs in your heart.

  **(one.)**

Ryan likes working with Gavin. Geoff doesn’t like him working with Gavin, but Ryan also enjoys fucking with Geoff, so there’s nothing but positives to the whole dynamic, really.

Here’s Ryan’s perspective on how he operates: he’s in the top crew of Los Santos. They flaunt law breakage and get high on destroying lives of others and, for as long as he can get away with it, Ryan’s going to enjoy this life to the fullest. If that means recklessly breaking traffic laws, setting buildings ablaze, and going on killing sprees, he’s going to do it all.

More than anyone else in the crew, Gavin gets that philosophy. Gavin lives by a system of glamour and glitz and living in the moment. He’s reckless with his property, his body, and his life.

Together, they’re the bane of Geoff’s existence and it’s really, truly fun.

Just the other day, they blew up a boat dock with fireworks when they were supposed to be doing some trade deals in the desert. A week back, they were caught on camera performing casual arson with rainbow colored flames in the financial district. A classic moment of triumph that starkly stands out in Ryan’s mind involved painting the twenty-fifth story windows of the Corpirate’s HQ Fake Crew colors.

The entire crew is prone to inciting city-wide disasters, certainly. But there’s something bitter and twisted in Gavin and him specifically, he decides. They both find indiscriminate reigns of murder filmable and enjoyable respectively and normal people probably don’t.

They’ve established long ago a silent rule: as long as it’s done with enough flair and pizazz it’s fair game. So, naturally, this means—

"Oh, Vagabond." Gavin laughs, voice airy and bright and hysterically giddy. His eyes are glittering with controlled glee behind $3000 gold-tipped shades. "Vagabond, you bloody romantic. You're spoiling me."

"Anything for you, dear,” Ryan says. All of Los Santos' Underworld bows before him as he bends down to his poor, poor corpse's shoes and ties the laces together with the gang member's next to him. "How many is that?"

"Twelve. Twelve dead people lying dead in a dead circle with their shoelaces all bunched together," Gavin says, the hand holding his iPhone shaking with mirth as he records. Ryan starts to pile up the poor gang members who dared to wear velcro shoes, rubber boots, or worse, open-toed shoes, onto a gasoline and match created bonfire in the center. "The police are going to have a right fit trying to figure out why this happened."

Ryan dusts his hands dramatically and steps back to survey his work. "Do you think I should squirt ketchup on them? The fucking guy over here," Ryan kicks a heavily tattooed bald man in the side, "had a take out bag in his backpack and there is an obscene amount of ketchup packets in it. He really needs to chill out on the ketchup. Also, who brings take out to a gunfight?"

"You tried to steal from his corpse?" Gavin gasps and Ryan turns to look at him. He's rocking on his heels with enthusiasm. "You tried to rob him? You raided all these corpses?"

"I opened one bag." Gavin gives him the most doubtful look he can manage. "Okay, fine, seven bags. It's not like I couldn't not take their weapons and cash!"

Gavin's already crowing about The Vagabond finally understanding him and the art of tasteful thieving while Ryan shakes his head and keeps digging through the take out bag. “It’s really an obscene amount of condiments.”

"You should squirt ketchup on them, sure. But you should also squirt glitter on them. Make them shine since you're copying my style and all," Gavin insists happily, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a plastic bag of golden glitter seemingly out of nowhere. "Make a mess over their faces. Squirt all over them."

"For you, Gavin? I'll squirt. Squirt very hard. Be the squirtiest," Ryan says vaguely as Gavin laughs even harder. In total, he counts out about twenty-seven ketchup packets. “Who the fuck uses twenty-seven ketchup packets on one Big Mac? No man should have this many condiments for one burger.”

“Crazy people. Lunatics,” Gavin agrees. “You should draw something. Or peel open his eyes and spray ketchup into them!”

“I’m not gonna touch his eyes. That’s disgusting.” He does draw a processed-tomato red smiley face onto one guy's chest and gestures for Gavin to come closer to record the detail-work.

There’s a moment when Gavin gags after stepping in loose intestines but he manages to break back into a wide cheeky grin after Ryan points out the crudely drawn ketchup penis on a man's forehead. He also somehow squeaks with laughter harder when Ryan carefully takes the glitter bag from his hand.

Ryan gestures to Gavin's hair. "Do you just keep this in your pocket? Is this why you're always so shiny? Is the product in your hair all glitter?"

Gavin leans in as Ryan artfully decorates a few bodies. "I was going to do a thing with that. Something with a few whiskeys and grenades because Geoff has been an absolute bother recently," Gavin says, not that mysteriously, but definitely concerningly. "But this is priority. They'll think this is a new serial killer! How ridic would that be?"

"Unless we do this a few more times, they probably won’t think, 'oh indeed, yes, serial killer.’ But a Glitter-Ketchup-Shoelace Murderer on the loose is going to be just as good." Ryan dumps last half of the glitter bag onto a headshot wound. "I think this is quite artistic. Exaggerated, but that's modern art for you." He unceremoniously tosses the plastic bag onto the dirt. "Now we can add littering to the list of crimes."

“Save the environment, love.”

“No.”

Gavin shrugs, hands still steady. "That is minging. There are sparkles on his brain juices," he says without a hint of actual concern. "Pose, Vagabond. Smile for the camera!"

Ryan surveys his work proudly before menacing at the camera. "Alright, alright. We’re done here."

"Top," Gavin chirps, ending the recording, stepping next to Ryan, and kicking the side of a corpse with his converse. The body sparkles in the light. "This was absolutely the best murder-showing you've done. I'm showing the crew this recording later."

"I live to entertain you.” Ryan extends a glittering, blood and ketchup-stained hand for Gavin to take. "To my bike we go."

"You're a mess," Gavin says before kissing him on cheek him wetly and running off like a fleet-footed asshole. A modern-day Hermes with Apollo’s glitz. He continues to make noises loudly and happily as Ryan pretends to chase in anger him all the way back to the bike.

The incident ends up on the television a few hours later. Some unlucky maintenance worker stumbled across the circle of former gang members and probably cursed God, Jesus, and all the Satanic rituals in the world before calling the police.

The media shitstorm that follows is amusing as hell. Apparently, a circle of dead people is enough to warrant national attention.

Gavin and Ryan send a lovely selfie to the Crew’s group chat, followed by a clip of L.S. Channel 7 News frantically blaming Shoelace Aliens for the recent developments in crime.

“Shoelace Aliens,” Ryan laughs. “They couldn’t be actually logical about this?”

“Los Santos is awful,” Gavin sighs with all the fondness of a person who chose to make his American dream in one of the most crime-ridden cities in the world. They’re in a bar, celebrating their stupid accomplishment and life in general. Ryan can raise a diet coke-filled glass to that.

“Do you want to go skinny dipping with me?” Gavin asks six shots and a flash of random Gavin-like inspiration later. They were talking about dolphin statistics, Ryan’s pretty sure. The speed a dolphin can swim, or how they’re the second-smartest animal or something.

Gavin slams back a seventh shot and Ryan, in salute, matches it with a swig of his soda. He slams the can down against the counter. For a second, the bartender seems tempted to give them a dirty look when Gavin slams the shot glass down just as forcibly. But he must recognize them, or Gavin at least, because he simply blanches and turns away.

To be powerful is a wonderful thing.

“Celebratory swimmies after swimmy bevs! Let’s hit up the ocean, Ryan. We have to get wet.”

“You’d rather do that with Michael.” Ryan is five diet Cokes in and his body's still shaking with sugar and the adrenaline of a job extremely well done. Swimming sounds great.

“Michael, Lindsay, Turney and I go for swimmy bevs in pools. We have to go do it bum-naked in the ocean.” Gavin says, slowly enunciating each word like Ryan’s the drunk one.

“A necessary distinction,” Ryan says. Because it is. “Are you going to be bath-bombing the sea? That sounds like a thing you’d do. Bath bombs. Since you keep bags of glitter in your pockets.”

“We should absolutely do that. Let’s dye the ocean gold and pink.” Gavin pulls down his shades, blatantly looking over Ryan’s body like one would a piece of meat ready to be glitterfied. Ryan stares back, eyebrow cocked. “You’d look fab in sparkles.”

“As incredible as a Shoelace Alien?”

“Now you’re just fishing for compliments.”

“We should go fishing. The crew, I mean,” Ryan says idly. “Geoff has been talking about it for months. Years.”

“I’ll go with you on vacation anytime, dear Ryan, but right now? Beach.”

“Beach it is,” Ryan indulges, watching as Gavin send a happy little smile to their bartender before tipping generously with a hundred dollar bill. The bartender gives a tense return grin.

They hop off their barstools, patrons either drunk and staring, or sober and resolutely looking away, and they head out into the night’s warm summer air.

 

**(two.)**

There’s a crash coming from his kitchen. It’s cataclysmic and clumsy and concerning, and so Ryan immediately springs into action, pulling a pistol from his side table, and stealthily makes his way through his apartment.

Being woken up from sleep puts anyone in a grouchy mood and Ryan is quite ready to put a bullet in the disturbance’s head.

Unless it’s only a stray cat that broke in. It’s happened before. He had to give it water and take it to a no-kill shelter and everything.

The alternative is that it’s an unfortunate burglar who didn’t know that he was invading the apartment of Los Santos’ most feared mercenary. Maybe it’s a shitty merc on his first job. Ryan’s first assassination was a disaster plus twelve-hundred, he remembers. Clanging pots and pans are nothing compared to accidentally detonated C4 explosions.

The scenarios that rush through his sleep-deprived, coffee-deprived, mind die the moment he hears familiar squawking. And then there’s a rush of indignation overwhelming him as he makes his way slowly to confront his unforeseen guest.

“Gavin, why are you in my apartment?” Ryan taps his slippers— cow-shaped, a “thanks for not murdering us” four-month gift from Lindsay —against his hardwood floor. His pistol is held firmly in his hands and pointed at Gavin’s head, more for appearances than anything else. “Is there an emergency? Did Geoff finally send you to kill me? Did Geoff finally send you here for me to kill you? Because I almost shot you,” and when Ryan thinks of the fact that Gavin woke him up at this god-awful time in the morning before the sun has even risen he adds, “I still might shoot you.”

“Well good morning, Ryan, my dear! Your slippers look great. Terrifying things to wear, innit?” Gavin says this far too happily for an idiot invading the Fake AH’s most menacing member’s private residence. His hair is perfectly gelled up with his sunglasses neatly perched on top. Everything about him says Golden Boy in all caps except for the fact that he’s in one of Ryan’s shirts. It’s bright green and too loose on his body. He probably stole it from his closet at the penthouse.

Ryan feels his eye twitch. “Gavin.”

“Geoff would never kill you. Or have me kill you. And he wouldn’t order anyone to kill me. Unless he’s super bevved up, but he wouldn’t be serious about it.” Gavin stops. “Probably. But it’d have to be an entire crew thing for the death of a main crew member, really, because I wouldn’t let him kill me.” Ryan has sudden flashbacks to their meetings about Ray’s departure. “Oh, what if I already killed you and you were already dead and you’re just replaying the moments before your death right now?”

When Ryan just keeps giving him an extremely dirty look, Gavin puffs out his cheeks.

“You’re no fun in the mornings. And I made you coffee, like, fifteen bloody minutes ago. I thought you’d wake up way sooner but maybe you’re losing your touch,” Gavin says idly, before turning back to the pan he’s fiddling with. Ryan huffs at his arrogance, but relents and tosses his gun on the kitchen counter and makes his way over to the coffee pot.

“Exhausting night,” Ryan finally says after downing two mugs of surprisingly decent caffeine. He’s mentally consoling himself by repeating the mantra that Gavin is probably the best thief in Los Santos; it’s totally justifiable that he didn’t notice anything amiss. Sort of. “Today was going to be a vacation day.”

“A murder break?”

“No. My next murder break starts in September,” Ryan says, intending to be threatening. But the menace is gone so Gavin just giggles as he continues to cook. Breakfast, presumably. “I’m caffeinated, which means my coordination is way better now. So explain.”

“Explain what?” Gavin asks innocently as he pokes frying eggs with a spatula.

“Don’t you ‘wot’ me.”

Gavin flips the eggs, apparently satisfied with the texture of the prodded side. “I’m here because we don't spend time together outside of murdering people— not that it isn’t fun— and I spend time with everyone else outside of crew business. So it's not a big deal that I’m here. I thought I could make an English brekkie at your place because you kept promising enchiladas to us during that last heist but I have no clue how on Earth to make those.”

"Don't set my place on fire," he says, only to get a half-hearted wave of Gavin’s hand in dismissal. He looks down at his coffee and then back at Gavin. “How the fuck did you know where I live?”

"Lil J, of course!” Gavin exclaims, before turning to another pan where he’s frying hash browns. “Pass me the salt, would you?”

Ryan stands up and grabs low sodium salt (and isn’t that a contradiction) from a shelf to hand to Gavin. "Who told Dooley?"

"Ray did,” Gavin says, before winking at Ryan ridiculously. It’s even more ridiculous because his bottle-blond hair absolutely does not match the eye-searing green _I Believe in Aliens_ shirt that Jack got Ryan for Christmas two years ago. “I tried to text Geoff first but he still has my number blocked from the whole flare gun thing a few weeks ago. His mustache only got a little burned, too.”

"Why did Ray tell Jeremy where the fuck I live? And when?”

Gavin hands the spatula to Ryan, who obligingly keeps flipping hash browns as Gavin grabs the plates that already have sausages and pancakes neatly stacked on them. Ryan doesn’t like the idea that Gavin happily cooked in his apartment long enough for him to make all this food before Ryan woke up, so he actively suppresses the thought.

"Jeremy and Ray had a long fifteen-minute talk when Ray left to ‘leave Los Santos and this fucking crew forever before I murder all of you’ and Jeremy took his place, you know. I got the info out of Jeremy for two dollars." 

Gavin takes the spatula back and puts the hash browns on the plates. Ryan starts setting up glasses on the kitchen table. “Truly a bargain. Orange juice or milk?”

“Tea, obviously,” the British asshole says smarmily. “So Ray didn’t tell Jeremy anything. But I paid Lil J another ten dollars for Ray’s evidence folder on you that Jeremy got when Ray just gave him his penthouse room.”

“Ray did not have an evidence folder on me.” Ryan rummages around for tea bags. He’s pretty sure he only has shitty Lipton-brand iced tea in his cupboards. Gavin’s just going to have to deal with breaking into the house of a Southerner. “That man couldn’t make a single page report without scrawling YOLO or something equally terrible and outdated in the margins. There is no way in hell he’d ever willingly make a folder on a coworker.”

Gavin sets the plates down as Ryan goes to pour the hot water into the teacups. "Yeah, alright, but this was back when you were all scary and elusive and stuff,” Ryan threateningly looks at his cutlery knives and Gavin scoffs, “Yeah! Way back, way before you were a donut like that, I bet Ray five grand that he couldn't write up ten facts that I didn't know about you in a notebook.”

“You’re the donut. Full of… dough.” It’s not his best insult and Gavin gives him a look that blatantly says, five out of ten, love. “He succeeded?” Ryan asks when Gavin starts rummaging around in his kitchen drawers.

“No, you’re a donut. And, god no. He only got two and then gave up so he never got around to it and left it underneath his bed in his room and, during that fifteen min convo, he told Lil J to just keep whatever he left behind." Gavin starts looking through his fridge intently. "So I convinced Lil J that it was meant for me anyways and he took the ten dollars and chucked the file at me since the only things on the cover of the spiral notebook were my initials and the word ‘bet’, so."

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” Ryan asks when Gavin keeps his head stuck in the refrigerator.

"You don't have baked beans!” Gavin exclaims petulantly. “How am I to make a full English with no damn beans?”

"’ _Ow am I to make the fool English without any beans?_ ’” Ryan mocks, before looking at the full breakfast laid out in front of him. He’s slowly learning that he’d probably permit any house invasion for real food. Fucking Gavin. “So what was in the notebook?”

“One was just, ‘likes dogs,’ and the other was your address.” Gavin comes back over and sits down, apparently disappointed with Ryan’s lack of bean collection. “The third was one of your burner phone numbers. Ray was absolute toss at info gathering, you called it. And you don’t have the real bacon either which is just blasphemy.”

"I’m a blasphemous person.” Ryan takes a bite of sausage. Surprisingly good.

"According to those crazy American Christian groups, you’re totally blasphemous. Since you banged Ray and all.” Gavin hums around his eggs and lets out a gleefully sadistic noise when Ryan chokes on his food.

“What?”

“He knew about your apartment. Your personal apartment.”

“We had to hide out after a mission,” Ryan protests, scrubbing his face with a napkin. It was raining and Ryan may have totally, hypothetically, felt guilty for accidentally shooting Ray in the side and then whacking him once with a crowbar. Especially since Ray got shot in the leg by Gavin like, the month before, and had almost been blown up by Michael in the heist before that and— well, no wonder Ray eventually threatened to kill the entire Crew in their sleep before he left. “I didn’t sleep with him. It’s never been Ray in the crew.”

“Oh,” and there’s an odd smile on Gavin’s face. “Well, that’s good to know.” There’s a glimmer of sharpness in Gavin’s eyes as he looks Ryan over. “Do you like breakfast? It’d be better with beans and real bacon.”

Ryan meets his stare, recomposing himself. "You’re the foreigner here; your bacon is the fake bacon.”

Gavin gasps dramatically, laying his perfectly manicured hand over his chest. Gold nail polish, of course. “I’m going to poison your bacon next time, you bloody sausage.”

“I could report you and get you deported. Or dunk this toast in this tea in front of you.” Ryan lifts his slice and takes pleasure in the way that Gavin immediately starts gagging.

"Ryan! Don’t be horrid! I made this great breakfast for you so that we could have a wonderful weekend together! Week! Life!”

"Whatever,” Ryan says dismissively, but keeps munching away on his eggs. “You're like a piece of mold. A gross British fungus. You’re always latching on and— and sporing. I remember those hotel nights. I’m moving addresses because of this."

"But your neighbors love me!” Gavin points to a counter, where sure enough, an apple pie is innocently sitting next to where Ryan had tossed his guns aside. "That was from Mrs. and Mrs. Sowerby. I think they killed thirteen people in a famous Los Santos massacre and they’re now starting a new and peaceful life of investment fraud. I looked up all your neighbors for you, by the way, before I came here. They’re nice birds, they gave me that pie for us to share and chatted with me in the hall before I broke in."

"They probably think we’re dating,” Ryan points out and Gavin just waggles his eyebrows at him. Well, whatever. "Now I really have to move."

"But Ryan, look at the whole apple pie!" Ryan does have to admit it looks tempting. "And they adore you!” Gavin stops, looking pensive. “Actually, they love James King. You're apparently a nice boy from a gentle Midwestern town. How the world did you get away with that?"

"It’s because you still think my name is Ryan Haywood that you ask those kinds of questions.”

Gavin opens his mouth and closes it. He picks up his teacup. "I can't tell if you're serious or not. Anyways, breakfast and baked goods and some Breaking Bad marathons on the weekend is great bonding entertainment, Ryebread."

"Nice alliteration,” Ryan can’t help but comment like the true nerd he is. He shakes his head. “So you’re crashing here for the week because nobody's back at the penthouse and you’re sad and bored." Gavin just keeps smiling a stupidly enigmatic smile. "Fine, you’re crashing here because you're a parasitic entity leeching off of me and I've been brainwashed to be fond of you.”

He realizes his slip too late because Gavin’s already grinning horribly. "Aw, Ryan, you—”

"No. Nope."

"—you're fond of me! You silly little bread, I’m here because we’re both bored. Also, I told you. I like spending time with you outside of official work things. We’ve known each other for years and we snog on the regular and yet we’ve never done that proper.”

Ryan pointedly ignores the kissing comment. “I bet you already brought spare clothes and overnight supplies, too.”

“Absolutely,” Gavin says without a hint of remorse. “I was thinking we were going to share a bed, but if not, you taking the couch is always fine. And if I don’t want to go back to my apartment for things, it’s not the first time I’ve raided your closet.” Gavin has this odd habit of plucking clothes and possessions from the rest of the crew every time they all stay in the penthouse. Ryan and Michael’s main jackets are usually off-limits, but everything else is up for his grimy little bird claws to grab. “The cats are being catsat by Matt so that’s also top and covered.”

Ryan sighs and grabs his orange juice to make his way over to the couch. Gavin trails after him with a bounce in his step. "Don't break anything while you're here,” he says, caving because the breakfast was nice.

Fuck, Gavin Free successfully bribed him with food. Golden Boy parasitically worming his flashy little way into his heart again.

Gavin drapes on him immediately, supporting the parasite theory immensely. "Cross my heart, lovely Ryan."

"Or burn anything.”

"Promise."

"Or steal anything.”

"Promises are made to be broken," Gavin says and Ryan can’t help but chuckle.

They kill time like that. Breakfast plates stack on the table. By the time an entire half season of the randomly selected HBO show has uneventfully played, Ryan has already chugged too many of the diet cokes he keeps by his couch to count, Gavin has given up commenting on the cinematography and frame rate to insulting the main character’s inability to steal any art pieces successfully, and the both of them have been trading playful barbs about each other’s characters if _they_ were in a poorly written crime show.

“Do you do this whole bothering someone incessantly thing every time the crew is spread out and busy?” Ryan asks during a comfortable lull in the conversation. “Just invade someone’s life and force them to sit with you on the couch?”

“Well, usually I’m the one out of the city,” Gavin points out fairly.

Ryan thinks about how Gavin had six assignments in England last month and the numerous bullet wounds and alliances formed from the experience and shrugs. Ryan’s the Vagabond but he, ironically enough, stays Los Santos the most. “Didn’t really answer my question.”

“Nah. Can’t usually be bothered.” Gavin nuzzles into Ryan’s shoulder like a cat. “You’re top to be around and I was thinking about the notebook and enchiladas so I thought I’d try.”

“I still feel like you have some alternative motive for coming here,” Ryan says bluntly. “You probably stole my watch collection. Raided my safe for some ancient Spanish gold.”

“Just wanted to see what your home looked like,” Gavin says lightly. They’re both probably thinking about how the main game they pass the time with on stakeouts is Twenty Questions about Ryan’s furniture. “And you know, sad and bored.” _And because we’re far past pretending that there isn’t more to us, right? Right_ , goes unsaid but not unheard.

Or at least that’s what Ryan thinks he doesn’t hear. His heart unfairly hiccups a little with affection.

The day passes by lazily. Ryan orders pizza and uses Gavin’s credit card to do so, to loud protests.  
At some point during the TV marathon, Ryan makes it a point to pluck Gavin’s sunglasses off his head and chuck them on the table when Gavin continuously berates Ryan for not splurging on 4k monitors. When Gavin answers the door and flirts horrendously in an American accent with the pizza delivery boy, Ryan trembles in the background with stifled laughter.

Eventually, they naturally start discussing their usual ways to kill time. One plan includes robbing a series of convenience stores on blocks chosen by a traditional dart throw at Ryan’s "not-a crime-map" map of Los Santos.

“Let’s do the train-capers convenience store idea,” Gavin looks down at their week’s plans, “on Monday.”

Ryan writes it down on the “totally not-for-criminal-activities” whiteboard. “Done.”

“Oh, but we should absolutely do the parachuting off the Maize bank plan tomorrow."

“We need more of an objective than that.” Ryan jots down HEIGHTS and MAIZE BANK. He looks at the board and then underlines the words twice for emphasis. “Something more creative, Free.” Gavin doodles a picture of a stick figure falling to his death below it.

"We’ll,” Gavin’s eyes light up, ”chuck cash down to the streets below. Like modern day Robin Hood! More Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner, less Aaron Flynn.”

“Except we'd be throwing money at the corrupt. ‘Nobody is innocent in fucking Los Santos.’” It’s a Geoff quote that the crew likes to say before doing morally questionable things to the populace. He swaps to a different colored marker and writes RUSSELL CROWE in all caps. “I sometimes wonder why they haven’t just bombed this city yet. I bought groceries the other day and I saw two men get shanked in the aisle next to me. The cashier just rang me up like normal.”

"Mrs. and Mrs. Sowerby are perfectly alright."

"You informed me that they murdered thirteen people."

"They’re perfect neighbors for you! Plus, their apple pie is succulent." The statements are completely true on both accounts.

"Everybody has their flaws," Ryan agrees. "Strike tomorrow at noon?"

"Top.” Gavin’s rose-gold, horrendously cracked iPhone is already out in order to text Lindsay about their plan. "Lil J and Michael will be so mad that they're missing this. And Geoff is gonna have a fit when we tell him that we threw his money off a bank to make it rain."

"Jack will probably die laughing when she hears. Or she’ll call you an idiot.” Ryan taps the marker against his chin, thinking as Gavin makes an _Oi!_  sound. "All of the singles will cause a mass panic. A crowd full of trampling and death.”

"Exactly why it’s worth it.” Gavin nods smiling, like the sociopath he is. “And it’s their fault for missing out.”

"Absolutely worth it.” Ryan’s really not that much better on the sociopath scale.

One night spent bickering over dinner and creating loose plans in bed later, somehow leads to the Golden Boy and the Vagabond successfully throwing down approximately $10,000 in singles down from a chopper on top of the Maize bank.

“LSPD are terrible at their jobs,” Ryan admires and Lindsay, their dear queen who’s flying them above the chaos, starts cackling. Gavin cheers with the increasingly frenzied noises of the public and only whines a little when Ryan doesn’t let him jump off and pull his chute.

“But Ryan.”

“I don’t want to be the one awkwardly waving off questions of domestic abuse when I bring my bruised and battered... you... to Mrs. Sowerby’s birthday party,” Ryan explains. Gavin perks up visibly, like a bird popping up from the sand, at the idea of metaphorically crashing into Ryan’s life and routines. Lindsay starts cooing from her seat.

“You two are sweet,” Lindsay tells them. “When are you two going to touch dicks?”

“We’re not sweet,” Ryan loudly protests over the whirling blades of the helicopter at the same time Gavin says, “Aw, thanks, Lindsay!” and she laughs harder.

They leave, adrenaline filled and guns blaring, when LSPD finally half-heartedly starts sending choppers to take them down. They part ways with Lindsay after drinks at the penthouse over a job well done.

And if Gavin heads back to Ryan’s to spend the rest of the week marathoning shows and cooking meals without any protest from the homeowner, well, who else has to know?

(Mrs. and Mrs. Sowerby bring over freshly baked fruit tarts and regale them with tales of their own youthful murder sprees. Ryan really does have the best neighbors.)

 

**(three.)**

"Well, this is disturbing." Ryan leans back against the mansion wall and wishes it could be approximately 30 degrees cooler. The sun is atrociously bright, seeping into the skull mask and through his heavy jacket. His face paint is probably completely ruined, all melty and everywhere with his sweat. "Gavin, I know you like to play games with the Grim Reaper on an all-too-regular basis, but that man is clearly dead."

Gavin's practically sparkling in the sunlight. His hair is well-coiffed, well-styled, and all the sweat does is add another level of sheen to the normally immaculate appearance he oozes out from every gold-flaked pore in his body. It's completely ruined by the way he's bent down, aggressively jabbing a knife over and over into their target's torso. "I'm well aware of that, yes."

"You're really making him a mess there." And he is. With every stab wound inflicted, flecks of blood splatter and stain the concrete next to the rich asshole's pool. Ryan reaches into his pocket for a granola bar; one has to stay energized after murder. "You know, if I was Geoff or Jack, I'd be telling you to hurry the fuck up before the police arrive."

"Don’t be a hypocrite. You took your bloody sweet time strangling those bodyguards."

"I was trying to be stealthy," Ryan protests. "And what kind of rich ass drug dealer even hires bodyguards? Thompson was a pretentious little shit and they went against my morals. I had to choke them up a bit." He pauses, staring at the biggest pretentious little shit in the world now carving curses into Thompson's skin. "But that doesn't explain why you're desecrating his body. Unless this is a continuation of the shoelace thing from three months ago, in which case, I am honored." Ryan's pretty sure that this has nothing to do with why they were actually assigned to kill him; Gavin usually doesn't get that worked up over rival drug dealers encroaching on Fake Crew drug territories— excuse him, Fake AH Crew ally drug territories.

"Be honored, Ryan." Gavin doesn't even look over, meticulously trailing his knife over the corpse. "It's now a spiritual successor."

Ryan hums as he chews, waiting for the catch.

"Okay, he also insulted my fashion sense and then offered to sleep with me in a bar bathroom. And when I laughed that idea off, he suggested the alley," Gavin says, irritation and disgust lining his voice, and then carves a star into the man's chest. Geoff’s Crew symbol. "What a sleaze. Like I'm that easy."

"You were pretending to be a gaudy twink to get closer to him and to see if we needed to take him out," Ryan says, just to be contrary. He tactfully doesn’t mention the time that _they_ once had sex in an alley.

Gavin meticulously carves out a crude duck onto the body’s arm. The actually utilized Crew symbol, designed by Jack, and not the much cooler star design that Geoff likes. He makes an irritated noise at the back of his throat. Like an agitated kitten choking on yarn.

“Not that it matters?” Ryan offers. “And he did need to be taken out in the end because he’s a raging dick?”

"You’re getting it. And my gaudy fashion is high-quality. I'm wearing Gucci sunglasses here." Gavin stands up, looking down at the body and gives a vicious sort of grin, pleased with his work. His 'high-quality' silk dress shirt and his gold-and-obsidian wrist watch are both stained with blood. It's a waste of a good shirt, but it's not the worst Gavin has done to the wardrobe by far. He finally looks over. "Are you eating a food bar? Did you take off your mask to eat a food bar?"

"A granola bar," Ryan says and Gavin snorts and he takes the final bite and chews the carbohydrates mercilessly. "And I took my mask off because I'm hungry and it is hot."

"You're bloody lucky I shut off and shot the security cams then.” Gavin wipes his bloodied hands lightly on his shirt, eyes lingering on Ryan.

“More like our faces has been shown on television enough times now anyways and we still don’t get put in jail because our B team is surprisingly competent. And also because this is Los Santos.” Ryan crumples up the wrapper and pockets it. No need to litter without a corpse to throw it on. Gavin's focus is still on his face. "What? You've seen my face before. You see my face regularly. You stayed at my apartment for an entire three weeks and six days more than you said you would and then had me regularly take you to dinner with my neighbors.”

“Are they still asking for me?” Gavin asks.

“It’s been an entire month and they’re still wondering when my attractive British boyfriend is coming over again. You really charmed them with that rum cake you brought— wait, no, why are you still staring.”

"Your makeup is a horrific catastrophe. I want to redo it," Gavin says, completely seriously, and Ryan rolls his eyes as if he wasn't thinking the same thing ten minutes ago. "It’s all smudged. The smudgiest of paints."

"If we leave right now I'll wash it off and you can redo it at the base," Ryan offers temptingly. "I'll only destroy you and your work if you end up writing 'lovely' on my forehead in sharpie. Again."

Gavin sighs, walking closer to Ryan. "But you are lovely. And I only did that because Michael dared me to see if you’d wake up."

"I don't need it on my face, thanks," Ryan says, but gives one last look at Thompson's body, stabbed and ruined and posed awkwardly in rigor mortis. "You forgot something."

Gavin blinks at him. "What?"

Ryan strides straight over to the corpse, bends down, and ties the shoelaces together. Perfect. "You said it was a spiritual successor," Ryan says, only a little self-conscious. It's worth it for the way that Gavin starts crowing with laughter.

"You really are the loveliest," Gavin says, and he repeats it up to the point where they're seated nice and cozy in the air-conditioned car. He uses one of the wet wipes that Ryan keeps in the back seat to scrubs hard at Ryan's cheek.

He steadily continues to remove the face paint as Ryan drives; it's theoretically dangerous, but also tolerable considering the conditions that he typically drives under. "You're already looking much better. Not some god-awful Vagabond Halloween costume makeup anymore."

"In my defense, I blame the sun. Curse you mother nature and our humid ecosystem." Sometimes he feels that if he could tear down the giant ball of gas and shoot it up himself, he would. "Also, since you're working on cleaning my face now, we're going out for food. I'm starving."

"I'll even pay," Gavin says before cheerfully wiping the mess out of Ryan's left eye. Ryan makes a swerve and curses. Gavin seems unfazed, the blood-stained British prick. "I took our target's wallet, so I'll treat you anywhere."

"The most expensive burgers in Los Santos it is, then," Ryan says, completely positive that he has a smudged-mascara paint job going on around his eyes. He makes an abrupt detour and Gavin lets out a grossly happy laugh at the sharp turn. He's pretty sure Geoff won't notice that they're not immediately reporting back.

 They take their time at the restaurant, the waiter oh-so-kindly choosing to ignore the blood and the mostly scrubbed off red paint, and Geoff forgives them pretty easily after a bottle of fine wine. He forgets his initial grievances completely when Gavin grandly procures an apparently genuine gold antique statue he nabbed from Thompson's home.

"When did you even steal that?" Ryan asks the next morning as Gavin daintily applies black eyeliner to his lashes. "How the fuck did you know it was a priceless art piece? Were you just carrying that with you the whole time?"

"Well, I wasn't going to leave it." Gavin holds up silver-flaked lipgloss, Ryan shrugs in acquiescence and Gavin carefully applies it to his lips. "I'm a man of mystery and all, Ryan. Now, pucker."

No questions get answered, but Gavin's satisfied with the silver-and-absolute-darling Vagabond make-up job, so Ryan's satisfied as well.

It’s satisfying when Jack sees his face and starts laughing hysterically in the hall before taking a picture for future reference. “I love it,” she confesses. “Geoff won’t notice the difference at all,” Jack tells him.

“I’m thinking of keeping it until he does notice. Which means it’s going to end up a permanent Vagabond feature,” Ryan says idly, and Jack laughs and pats him on his shoulder.

It’s even more satisfying when Jeremy does a double-take and says, “It actually looks pretty good,” when Ryan spends quite a decent amount of time loitering in the penthouse with the face paint on to catch reactions. He can be vain too, sometimes. “I would’ve added more orange and purple, but Gavin did a surprisingly decent job. The skull shape is subtle.”

Michael, who was going on a rant about the injustice of being banned from using dynamite on the next heist to Jeremy, stops, and smiles. “It’s very Gavin. Minus any dicks,” Michael says, but fondly. “Don’t let him push you around too much; that’s what Jeremy’s for.”

“I object to that!” Jeremy protests, but Ryan’s already softly chuckling. “I don’t do everything Gavin says!”

“Third degree burns on the roof of your mouth,” Michael points out with glee. “That heist where you were taped to the side of the van getting shot at! I’m not saying you should stop because fuck that, it’s funny as hell, but like. Come on.”

Jeremy attempting to make justifications is what causes Ryan to step away, still smiling, back to his room.

It’s extremely satisfying when for the rest of the day, Gavin keeps giving him gleeful little looks and winks, especially when Ryan’s assigned to a negotiation with some friendly crew and doesn’t even try to remove the makeup.

It’s peak satisfaction when Gavin, after Ryan successfully completes another job on the same day, silver palate perfectly intact, gleefully pulls him by the collar of his jacket and starts making out with him.

“You’re not typically the most tactile crew member,” Ryan says sarcastically, and Gavin just keeps smiling until Ryan gives a helpless little smile back.

A full month later, Geoff stops mid-meeting to exclaim, “Jesus Christ, Ryan, when did you do that to your face?”

 

**(four.)**

"Ryan, Ryan, Ryan," Gavin says as he walks over, a hop in his step like a man hyped up on too much potential murder. Ryan’s standing in an alley, lighting up a cigarette. The dimly lit street lights cast unnatural shadows onto cracked pavements, and Ryan was blending just fine before Gavin-bright-as-the-sun-itself moved in on his personal space. "I just made us a thousand dollars!"

"What happened to, ‘I’m just gonna take a quick peek, it’s fine, don’t sodding worry about it, Ryan?’" Ryan exhales a puff of smoke. It adds to the _I’m not here on official Vagabond business at all, I’m totally here to play roulette, don’t you see my fancy tuxedo? now fuck off_ aesthetic that he’s playing at. Gavin’s dressed similarly, which in his case, actually means less glam and glitz than usual. "If you wanted to gamble, you should wait until after we finish today’s work. We could even go to Los Venturas and hit up the casinos we don’t own. Make a day of it.”

"Hardly the gambling type, am I?" Gavin tugs on his lapels to get him to lean in conspiratorially, despite the utter lack of security around the perimeter. "I nabbed the cash from random patrons over the course of the last thirty minutes. Casinos were a bloody easy way of making money when the crew was just starting up. Jack would have fun hitting up the slots and I would pickpocket the rich biddies who entered.”

Ryan thinks that Gavin's absolutely the gambling type: he makes bets with Michael, does stupidly useless stunts on his excessively-mirror-modded Faggio, and loves to challenge the odds whenever he gets the chance. His eyes seem to shine with the idea of Ryan fighting him on the point and Ryan bites down a smile and seals in both the witty comeback and the temptation to lean down a little further to kiss the stupid smirk off his face. Instead, he pulls back, smooths his suit down and mildly says, "She really does love those slots."

“A crazy amount,” Gavin agrees fondly, adjusting his tie. There are rainbow ducks and palm trees decorating it which is a pretty good indication that it’s probably Jack’s. “Since we’re all nicely dressed and all, I went ahead and made dinner reservations at Giannini’s. I’m starving.”

“Not sushi?” Ryan half-pouts. “I wanted some sushi.”

“We went for sushi last week,” Gavin points out. “We even had uni and everything. And Italian after dealing with useless rich people all day? Top.”

“You’re a useless rich person.”

“Yeah, but wearing suits and smiling at evil corporate donors during morning yacht parties and lunchtime bank meetings is a different kind of useless rich person,” Gavin whinges. “It’s all Geoff-like.”

“New money versus old,” Ryan says dryly. “The Fake AH is truly very Gatsby.” It’s true that playing nice for others is stupidly exhausting. All that nonsense posturing.

Playing the Vagabond, on the other hand.

Gavin rolls his eyes as if he can hear Ryan's egotistic thoughts. “Let’s finish our last job of the day so I can get some good pasta. Did you see our target?”

“Erikson slipped into the back room a few minutes ago.” Ryan puts out his cigarette and drops it to be ground under his dress shoe when Gavin scrunches his nose up in distaste. Gavin’s strongly opposed at the very notion of Ryan potentially dying from lung cancer. They had a conversation, once, about the most common ways they could end up dead in their line of work.

Parachute malfunction? Definitely probable. Getting run over by a car stuck with twenty-seven sticky bombs? Extremely likely. Some health defect? If that ends up being the diagnosis, they should just get shot now.

Having health issues implies living long enough to reach the age of liver failure and heart problems. Ryan and Gavin came to an odd mutual understanding that the scenario of old age probably wasn’t likely (or even wanted) for them while they were in the crew. Another facet of living in Los Santos.

Of being them, honestly.

“Cocky, ain't he?” Gavin asks despite cockily teasing the borders of Ryan’s personal space. “What is he playing at, making backdoor deals in a Fake-owned casino?”

“He’s playing with his own life is what he’s playing at.” Ryan’s not surprised at all to find Gavin’s face an inch away from his own. “Riled up?”

“We’re finally going to finish work today, Ryan, and I get to spend time with you, Ryan, of _course_  I’m bloody fired up, Ryan.” When he aggressively kisses the lingering smoke out of Ryan’s mouth, his lips burn like sparks.

“You say my name too much,” Ryan finally manages to say when Gavin steps back. “You’re wearing my cufflinks, you know. Did you steal those from my nightstand?”

“They’re gold and shaped like books.” Gavin holds up his wrists next to his lips, bowed into a coy little smile. “You’re a nerd.”

Ryan doesn’t deny it. He affectionately pats Gavin’s cheek who leans into his hand. Like a cat earning praise despite the asshole move it recently pulled. There are a lot of cat analogies for Gavin. “I want dessert after dinner.”

“I want your dessert.”

Ryan tuts. “Control your sex drive, I’m talking about tiramisu. Gelato. Desserts.”

“Oh, Mr. Vagabond,” Gavin fake-swoons as he puts on his shades, stupidly smug face still in effect. “My apartment or your’s afterward? Actually, definitely your’s. I’m doing set up for something in mine. It’s quite a thing.”

“That’s quite a secret,” Ryan says as they head back into the casino. They’re immediately welcomed by the sounds of thudding chips and loud profanities echoing around them. “Does it involve sex?”

“A secretity-secret-y-doo. No nobs or arses planned for my apartment thing yet but we’ll see,” Gavin somehow says with a straight face and the subject is temporarily dropped. They nod to the security guards and make their way through the back rooms, closely knit to keep their voices low.

“So are you ready to nab him and run?”

“We don’t need to nab him or run,” Ryan reminds him. “This casino is ours, after all. The music will drown out any screams.”

“How long do you think it’ll take for him to break?” Gavin asks as they step inside the office, inflection suddenly more pompous than usual. Upper-class Golden Boy in action.

Glasglow’s main dealer pales immediately at the sight of the Golden Boy and the Vagabond. One of the men next to him — presumably his only accompaniment to this attempted financial takeover— tries to pull out a gun before getting immediately pinned down by one of the workers.

The Vagabond gives a shark’s grin, his pristine tuxedo emphasizing the sharpness of his teeth and the coldness in his eyes. He pulls out a pocket knife and starts twirling it, enjoying the way that Erikson’s eyes start flicking back and forth in astounded fear. He doesn’t even try to run.

Good man. Knows his odds.

“Twenty minutes tops,” he answers.

The Golden Boy laughs and winks at another cooperating worker. “Bring us some rope, a lighter, and gasoline, would you? You'd be happy to fetch, right? You are a part of  _our_ Crew after all.”

There’s an unsubtle hint of possessiveness that goes noticed by everyone in the room and the poor worker, to his credit, takes it in stride and immediately runs off to bring the aforementioned supplies.

There’s a bang. The Vagabond blinks down at the new corpse in the room.

Gavin blows a kiss at the casino manager who unapologetically shot Erikson’s bodyguard in the head. “Thanks.”

“You know can call me Blaine, Mr. Free,” the manager, Gibson, says, wiping down the gun on his dress shirt. “And uh, no problem. Anything for our proprietors.” Gavin looks positively thrilled with him and Ryan shoves down the feeling of annoyance that irrationally surges up.

Erikson is still frozen in place and he looks ready to shit himself. The blood from his bodyguard is splattered onto his Italian leather shoes and he’s practically shaking in terror. It’s hilarious how easy this is going to be, and the Vagabond stifles a snort before stepping closer and twisting Erikson’s arm behind his back with only frenzied, uncoordinated resistance.

“You’re playing with your food,” Gavin whines and Erikson trembles harder. “We’ve checked into eight casinos today, it took bloody ages now, and I’m exhausted. Get this done fast.”

“Don’t need backseat torturing, honey,” Ryan says, ever droll, and cuts a neat ribbon into Erikson’s cheek with his free hand.

It doesn’t take long after that for the other staffer to bring the supplies. He stammers out a _yes, we have lighters_ , but _sorry, no ropes_ , and surprisingly, _here’s the gasoline_. And as Gavin steps away to chat away with Blaine in the neighboring room about everything and nothing, the Vagabond squeezes all the information on Glasgow’s attempted property claims he can get from Erikson’s pathetic little mouth.

It’s only fifteen minutes later before Ryan blinks and realizes he pretty much got the info that Geoff wanted in the first place. Faster than he expected.

Well, that’s why they were sent, after all. Speed and efficiency in their brutality and all that jazz.

“That was a weak torture session,” Gabin says from the doorway, staring at Erikson who was pathetically crying while drenched in gasoline. “I lasted longer when I was a tossing sixteen years old.”

“Not under me,” Ryan says, with a hint of a promise in his tone.

“Not under the fearsome Vagabond, no. We’ll test my stamina later tonight.” But Gavin is still shaking his head as Gibson and the other staffers step back into the room. They all look whited-out, like the screams drained a little bit of their humanity from them, but _Golden Boy_ Free somehow even looks brighter than usual.

“Bring him to this address when you have the time, Blaine?” Gavin coyishly lowers his sunglasses as he slips a sheet of paper with the address of one of their transfer warehouses to Gibson. Ryan grits his teeth. “There’s more to do with him, darling, but we’re done for the night.”

“Gotcha. Can do. Will do, I’ll definitely do that. For the Fakes, Mr. Free. Gavin,” Gibson manages, and Gavin laughs a deceptively adorable little laugh, flecked with golden mirth. “Whatever you want, we can totally do.”

“Incred,” he says, already stepping out, and Ryan, after wiping the blood off his knives onto Gibson’s shirt in spite, stands up straight and easily follows him out. A menacing shadow to Gavin’s glowing light.

“So Giannini’s?” Ryan asks after they’ve slammed the doors of their car. The adrenaline is still rushing high and his hands are trembling in easy anticipation on the wheel. The neon lights cast a good look on Gavin, who’s happily relaxing back into his seat. “It’s still weird not wearing my mask for these things. It’s like I’m back doing my theatre major. Except it’s more real and gruesome, and less fake blood and scripts.”

“The world is our stage and all.” Gavin agrees languidly. “Also, you look ridiculous in that tux. It’s absolutely oversized on you.”

“Oh, so you’re insulting me now,” Ryan gasps. “Hereby, banned. Henceforth, barred from my home. I’m using you for the Michelin star restaurant access and then dumping your glitzy ass on the curb.”

“I meant ridic as in ridiculously attractive, you pleb,” Gavin says, laughing, and then promptly tugs on Ryan’s collar to give him another kiss in the night the moment they reach a red light. There’s a brief moment where Ryan thinks he can taste copper, but it’s definitely just the smell of the blood staining his clothes.

“Do you kiss all plebs?”

“Shut up, Ryan.”

“I’m getting mixed signals with the way you’re insulting me with every compliment.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Gavin repeats, and Ryan obliges by pulling him for another rough kiss.

“To fancy pizza we go,” Ryan manages after they finally break apart. Traffic violations on their way back are made with every sly eyebrow wiggle and fake moan Gavin makes.

It’s fitting because, as all good criminals know, crimes are committed in the name of passion. Or something. There’s definitely going to be a lot of passion in the bed of criminals that night.

 

**(five.)**

"Well," Ryan says, and Gavin gives a snort.

"Don't follow that up with what I think you're gonna say."

"This is disturbing," Ryan finishes and Gavin unremorsefully throws a handful of flour at his face. "You’re the one started it with your, frankly, disturbing actions.”

"But now you're making it into a thing," Gavin huffs, flicking more flour into Ryan's hair before turning back to his confectionary batter. "I'm gonna have Jon put that on a shirt. ‘Well, this is disturbing,’ with a picture of a Shoelace Alien below it or something. New crew shirts for sale on our webpage."

It’s not a bad idea, really. Ryan can understand the benefit of making money by commercializing their illegalities. But at the same time... "Explain to me again why we even have a website?"

"Because our 'fans' are dedicated enough to make a ‘fanpage’ and we get to post applicant rules and manage our public reputation on it," Gavin says in the most faux-condescending voice he can manage. Which would be pretty condescending if he had his usual shades and jewelry on and not a horrible, neon pink This pie is an easy A since I'm from the UK apron. "Ryan, lovely Ryan, beat those eggs for me."

“That’s still stupid. It’s stupid. The entire shirt business is stupid and Los Santos is fucked up.” Ryan digs through the drawers for a whisk.

“You’re just bitter that they keep making shirts of your flubs, love.”

“I’m not bitter. I’m hardly going to be bitter when Jon is just wrong,” Ryan says, aggressively beating the eggs. He keeps watching Gavin slowly. "This was your _Top Secret_ , MI6-level, Ultimate Ultra secret that you’ve been strenuously repeating for the last two weeks as _very secret for Team Love and Stuff_? You invited me to your apartment at—” Ryan pointedly looks over at the kitchen clock, “—4:30am to bake? We couldn't do this in the penthouse? What is this, The Great British Bake-Off?"

"Tossing great show and yes to all… four. I think you asked four questions," Gavin says. His bleached hair and sharp eyes are an odd contrast to the doughy mess in front of him. "I made two meat pies, and a batch of cookies is waiting to be baked. He nods towards the counter where, sure enough, a tinfoil line-up of cookies are innocuously sitting. "We're baking a cake!"

"A cake," Ryan repeats, exasperated. He keeps whisking the eggs regardless. "The first time I'm invited to the elusive frontman’s place for casual times, the Gavin Free's apartment, in say, the three and a half years we’ve known each other, and in the year since… this thing between us began, and it's to bake a cake." There's an earworm in his head awkwardly ringing out some stupid meme that Ray used to sing whenever Geoff took to the oven in the penthouse. A piece of cake to bake a cake or something. At that moment, staring down at the bowl of egg whites next to Gavin, Ryan thinks he hates his life just a little more than before. “We could do a lot more than bake when here.”

Gavin, the glittery ditz, seems oblivious to his plight. "It’s perfect celebration and sequel to our great Ryan’s Apartment adventure with those rum filled cupcakes! Which reminds me, we’ll absolutely be making cupcakes after. We’ll be baking about a dozen since we hired an official staff and kitchen to do a lot of the actual baking. I bought loads of things for all the things."

Ryan finally sets the whisk and bowl down. "Okay, Gavin. I baked so many things for both Mrs. and Mrs. Sowerby. For most of my neighbors throughout my life, as you very well know. Making sweets is not relaxing.” In fact, it’s a stressful feeling to get everything precisely baked and delicious because Ryan takes pride in his perfect brownies and cookies and pies. This usually results in him going on a murder spree every time he gets a batch wrong. “You know how long it takes to make the sweets that you keep taking half the credit for.”

"But Ryan, that rum cake was all me though!" Gavin’s eyes are glittering, and Ryan just knows that there's going to be some weird plot twist that comes out of his mouth to make the great and fearsome Vagabond want to stay to bake stress-inducing cupcakes. He denies the low thrum of anticipation building in his stomach and raises an eyebrow instead.

"Ryan," Gavin repeats, setting down his own pastry dough.

"Gavin.”

"Lovely, lovely, Ryan," and Gavin steps forwards to drape his arms around Ryan and smear the flour off his apron and all onto Ryan's leather jacket. "You have to bake for me because I bought so many ingredients.”

Ryan looks down at the grinning face. "If those meat pies that you made comprise of human flesh and you're Sweeney Todd-ing this, I think you're going to need to bring Michael or Jeremy here instead." Gavin likes to recount with vivid descriptions about that one time that Michael accidentally chewed on a piece of human entrails. With additional gagging and horror about how feral it all was. With Jeremy, you just never know.

"That's the movie with Helena Bonham Carter, right?" Gavin says radiantly and then shakes his head. His eyes go back to lidded and sultry, all the danger of the Golden Boy oozing out. "Ryan, Rye Bread, Rye, I've been baking with almonds."

"Oh?"

Gavin's expression is practically devilish. "Some of these ingredients are really, really rare. And," he shifts, moving one hand to cup Ryan's flour-covered face, "some cause really, really weird side effects if eaten. Like Hitman, you know?"

Ryan wraps his arms around Gavin's waist, pulling him closer. "Seducing me with video game mechanics?"

"And a variety of poisons," Gavin agrees, before shifting backward. Suddenly the animalistic tension is gone and he's all bad aprons and excited smiles again. "You mentioned two heists ago how you've never done this before and now you have your chance!”

“I don’t remember what I was doing two weeks ago, let alone two heists ago.”

“Two weeks ago you were testing grenades on private jets at the airport with Jack. Two heists ago was the one with the purple flower and the Rembrandt painting and the bloody clowns.”

“The one with the Danish noble that you kept calling attractive in front of me?”

Gavin pauses. “I think that was five months ago with the Vermeer heist and the firetrucks. No, I’m talking about the conversation we had during the pottery delivery part. Right when Geoff and Jack accidentally smashed the antique ceramic teacup.”

Ryan considers this. “I recall nothing.”

“You know,” Gavin waves his hands around in an effort to move the conversation along, sending flour into the air, “playing with poisons! You said you wanted to play with poisons, alright? You tosser.”

"You’re always so considerate, always so sincere," Ryan says, only half-joking. Because he is, in his own, fucked-up, Fake AH kind of way.

Gavin pulls back even further to excitedly clap his hands together. "I've been building a collection through Steffie. She’s been bloody amazing about it," and he bounds over to pull open a cabinet. There’s a wide variety of colorful bottles and spices lining the shelves and Ryan is enamored. It's genuinely beautiful. In an accidental death-inducing sort of manner. Like Gavin himself, actually.

"We can kill so many people with sweets," Ryan marvels. “And the sweets don’t have to be perfect because the people eating them will be dead.” Win-win.

“We’re going to kill so many people,” and that alone makes Ryan’s heart jump out with sudden affection, and Gavin continues. “So I made us another fake business! It's a redemption to _Love and Truck_. Do you remember _Love and Truck?_ That was the first business we made last year, you know, with the god-awful box truck and furniture heist?”

“All those packing peanuts.” It was a traumatic experience for all. Michael still refuses to even step foot in their shipping warehouses.

“I still find them in my drawers sometimes.” Gavin runs a hand through his hair, idly spreading flour. “Anyways, I called up Burnie instead of Geoff to establish us as a licensed bakery, which he did, so we can now do this entire thing.”

“Geoff would have taken… maybe two years to actually implement this?”

“More like never. ‘That sounds like it’d cost a load of money and, dicks, and energy, put it on the penthouse whiteboard and stop fucking bothering me, Jesus,’” Gavin says in a shockingly good impression. “So I called Burnie, Steffie was a doll, and Matt called an actual catering company to bake the remaining 60% of sweets that aren’t lethal. Trevor is supervising a shady catering company to create the other 20% of slow-acting poison sweets that we aren’t making, and now we can get all of this together just in time.”

“Just in time for the gala,” Ryan says, finally following along. The not-so-secret Glasglow gala with a shitton of rival crew members that Jack and Geoff had been talking about sabotaging, pranking, fucking with for months.

There’s a cheeky smile on Gavin’s face that Ryan can’t help but mimic fondly. “Killer confectionaries, it's brilliant! Sweet even.” Ryan can’t even bring himself to groan at the awful pun because of how pleased Gavin looks with himself. “Surprise! A thank you gift for the loveliest Ryan.”

Ryan blinks, startled and touched. “For what?”

“For letting me move in and all. I can be sensitive and all that!” Gavin says indignantly when Ryan just keeps staring at him.

“You didn’t have to thank me for giving you a key.”

“But I wanted to,” Gavin huffs. “It’s easier than having to regularly break in. So just feel free to praise me for my brilliant plan, alright?”

"It’s a pretty brilliant plan. You’re brilliant,” he concedes with a smile and Gavin starts beaming like a beacon again, “as long as you don't eat your own poisoned pastries.”

Gavin really does look brilliant, glowing despite the flour and sugar and multitudes of poisons lacing his skin. Impulsively, Ryan pulls Gavin in by the apron and pulls him in for a kiss. Gavin wraps his flour stained hands in Ryan’s hair and Ryan still can’t even muster any sense of indignation amidst the bubbling elation.

“I can’t believe I like you,” he mutters.

"Aw, Ryan," Gavin laughs breathlessly, but his cheeks are dusted a pleasant pink, "I knew that senseless, stylish killing would turn you on."

"A shocker, I know. What tipped you off, the dazzling murders that ended with us going out at night, or my reputation in the crew?” Ryan puts on the spare apron and rubber gloves Gavin very obviously set out for him on the counter. They’re even in crew colors: ugly lime green and black with a duck pattern on the apron. “So when are we heading out?”

Gavin snaps a picture of him and sends it to the group chat before answering. Evil. “Glasgow is hosting the thing at eight. L’Amour de Fluff has officially been registered as the dessert company for the last six months, Jack has had our disguises and names ready for two weeks so we can get in, and it’s all solid. After we deliver all the delicacies, all we have to do is stand by and watch as the rival crew members plop.”

“Plop.” Ryan watches fondly as Gavin starts the poisoning procedures, pulling on his own gloves and spreading out a bunch of jars and bottles on the counter next to a bowl of cupcake mix.

“Flop and flounder and then spasm. Jeremy is gonna be so mad that he’s not going to be a part of this because he’s been all over poisoning people recently. But this is for us.”

Ryan leans over to watch him. “Surprisingly sweet of you, I’m impressed.”

Gavin carefully pours something into a cup, like a chemist testing out unknown reactions. “I really like the word spasm. People spasming all over the gaff.”

“It’s a good word. Very useful to describe the process in which poisoned people becoming poisoned corpses.” Ryan proceeds to pick up a perfectly innocuous plastic purple container. “Is this the puffer fish poison?”

Gavin squints as he reads Matt’s shitty cursive on the cap. “We’re absolutely using that in custards.”

“I refuse. We’re putting it in peach mini pies.”

“You’re so Georgian,” Gavin scoffs.

“You don’t even know where Georgia is.”

They work in comfortable tandem for a bit, bustling around each other to make the widest variety of deadly sweets they can. Matt really went all out in designing the menu. “You can never ever cook in this kitchen again,” Ryan suddenly realizes after Gavin nearly spills something clear and liquidy that should never be spilled onto the marble counter. “You’re definitely going to die if you do. One hundred percent.”

“Well, obviously I’m aware of that, you bellend. I’m never eating anything in this kitchen again either.” Gavin frowns at a bright yellow label on one of the many numerous jars of miscellaneous contents. “Matt told me that these poisons aren’t gonna go through the plastic gloves and kill us dead through the skin. But I don’t know if I trust that.”

“You do sound pretty doubtful.”

“Death is a serious thing!” Gavin says, even as he’s carefully sprinkling something deadly into a frosting mix. Compound 1080? Who the fuck knows. “And I’m practically fully moved in and all anyways. So it’s not a big deal. Me not really living here, that is.”

“More like, you spend seventy percent of your living time in the Penthouse, and twenty percent at my place, so it’s ‘not a big deal.’” Now that Ryan’s properly looking around, the apartment does seem a little impersonal; cheap IKEA furniture and pictures of cats are the only things accessorizing his living room. A Roomba with a knife taped onto its back is dangerously whirling around in Gavin’s closed bedroom, diligently doing its job.

Ryan makes a mental note to dismantle it before Gavin sets it loose on his apartment.

It’s tragically similar to the barrenness of Ryan’s apartments before he decided that constantly moving places in Los Santos was a property tax rip off and way too much of a hassle.

“Your penthouse room has more things than your home, too,” Gavin points out. “I’m always not here and baking poisons when I am here, so what’s the point of getting attached, right?” Ryan can agree to that. “Besides,” Gavin says, lowering his voice, as if suddenly shy with the confession, “I love your bed. Memory foam? Top.”

“Your face is top,” Ryan counters as he contemplates the near future with Gavin involving daily fighting over the blankets and midnight spur-of-the-moment bad decisions and exchanges of soft kisses and whispers about weapons and motorcyclist murders and cats shedding fur everywhere and helicopter escape to sunny islands, guns out and blazing.

They really shouldn’t be the domestic types, Ryan thinks as Gavin slips a bowl of whipped cream into his hands and smacks a kiss on his cheek.

They finish early enough, and other than a scary incident where Ryan very nearly eats a very lovely red velvet cupcake, they spend the rest of the day carefully meeting up with Matt, Trevor, and Steffie to set up for the infiltration.

“We’re recording this right?” Ryan later asks, unflatteringly illuminated by computer monitors. The fake company got through the security checks easily enough, and he’s busy fiddling with his pastry chef collar in the back of the second delivery van.

Gavin pulls up the Glasgow mansion camera feeds and squints at the waiters organizing the buffet table. “Of course I’m recording this. Alfredo’s monitoring the stream and it’ll go into our murder-footage vault. It’s like you don’t know me.”

“I do like our murder-footage vault.” Ryan fastens his pastry chef outfit's lapels. Camouflage in unnecessary disguises is all part of the fun. “It’s all murder-y.”

Gavin stands up to stretch, sees the chef hat perched neatly on Ryan, and gives a squeaky laugh. “I’m not wearing that. It’ll ruin my aesthetic.”

“You have no aesthetic. I have an aesthetic and I still manage to look great in this.”

“All lies,” Gavin says haughtily, and, with a final signal to the B Team, they start to sneak in through the backdoors to start the mayhem.

It really does end up as one of their better dates despite how smoke-scented and charred they end up after they inevitably have to set off _fuck-it-let’s-burn-and-explode-everything_ contingency plan. They get to see some people vomit, others foam at the mouth, and most clutch their stomachs as they collapse on the ballroom underneath crystal chandeliers, driving each other into frenzied panic. Ryan thinks it’s fucking gorgeous.

And then they get to blow up eight ovens as a bonus.

“I just hoped that there would be more dessert consumption,” Gavin later tells him as he lays down on his back, eyes trained on the sky above. Ryan tosses his blackened chef hat onto the grass next to him.

“We knew that people would stop eating the sweets after, you know, the death started.”

“Yeah, but it was still too soon, Ryan.”

“You’re sulking.”

“Am not.”

“You are absolutely sulking. What, is fire no longer good enough for you?” Ryan teases him as he sits down on the hill to bask in the light of their work. It’s damp and cool, a nice contrast to the scorching inferno they ran away from. “We’ll cupcake more people next time.”

He sees Gavin make a minged-off, scrunched up face before he rolls over and faces Ryan. “The fireworks are a nice touch. It’s like we’re in a movie.”

“The scene before us? If you ignore the guttural screams and crashing building foundations and pretend there’s an orchestral score covering those noises up, sure.”

“No, Ryan. Everything.” Gavin sighs. “Everything we do, straight out of a movie.”

As the smoke curls gently into the sky, the fireworks continue to burst in a nice array of color. Gavin’s shades are up, gently pushing back gel-stiffened and soot-stained hair. There’s something charming about laying on the grass and watching a mansion burn, with their getaway bike parked neatly within reach. Ryan hums, content. “An action-heist movie?”

“Action-romance, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

 

**(plus one.)**

“We’re officially engaged!” Gavin cheerfully exclaims, slamming the door open. His entire body is covered in paint and glitter. Of his flashy, overpriced sunglasses, only the frames remain perched on his head. He holds up one hand to show off a gold band. “Ta-da!”

Ryan, standing next to him, languidly holds up his own hand after Gavin elbows him. On it is an, intimidatingly enough, already blood-stained matching ring. His jacket is ripped in odd places and his clothes are badly stained with dirt, oil and candle wax. Ryan works his lips into a glitter-stained smile. “The docks are cleared out, your other apartment is, uh, damaged, and you should probably check the news. We’re going to Tokyo together tomorrow to lie low.” The statement doesn’t even take the semblance of a request.

“We used your account to buy the tickets and I have our forged passports ready! First class flight, five-star hotel, and everything. We’ve decided that maxing out your international credit card is our wedding gift.” Gavin is all warm smiles and he moves forward with a bounce in his step. The tiles beneath him are painted in his wake. “Now, if I end up in prison for shoelace-related murders, I’ll be here forever! Isn’t that incred?”

“If he doesn’t end up dying before the actual wedding.” Ryan pokes at the small in Gavin’s back. Gavin jumps, spreading more glitter everywhere, and lets out a noise in affront.

Geoff closes his eyes and sinks lower into his hot tub. “Congratulations. Get the fuck out of my bathroom.”

 

**(plus one-point-five: the international remix.)**

“Are we ever going to tell Geoff that we’re not actually married and that we were just going on a spontaneous vacation to increase our international standing?” Gavin nods at the waitress who hands them their menus. “Thanks!”

“Absolutely not,” Ryan says after a bit. Fine dining is the best type of date, because, well, food. Good food. “We can use the honeymoon excuse at least seven more times if we play our cards right.”

“Sounds toppers.” Gavin nods and slams the menu down. “I’m absolutely getting the fugu.”

“We’re both getting the— our target just walked in.” Ryan’s hand twitches on his chopsticks. Maybe he could somehow use a soy sauce bottle as a weapon?

“We gotta use the wasabi on him,” Gavin says, interrupting his thoughts. Ryan turns to see a bright grin splitting his face.

“Wasabi isn’t lethal.”

“You would absolutely somehow make it lethal.”

Ryan doesn’t deny it, choosing to return a smile of his own as his answer. “We’ll figure it out after the fugu.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am so fond of the idea of Gavin and Ryan casually escalating their relationship over time without either of them really acknowledging it out loud. Thanks for reading! This fic has been a lot.


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